On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:29:58 +0100, Ballew, Pat wrote:> >I think I want to try the most direct, what if >the probability of selecting either>stick was in the ratio of their length to the whole,>so if part a was 1/4 ">and part B was 3/4 " then the prob of picking A is >1/4 and the prob of >picking B is 3/4... A nice >extension to the problem.... Any quick solutions?>

This is pretty simple. For a given h the probability was found to beh/(1-h). Assuming h < 1/2, this event will occur with probability(1-h), such that we'll have to integrate [h/(1-h)](1-h) from 0 to 1/2,with the subsequent multiplication by 1/2. The result is 1/4.